Grief Digest Articles

I once heard someone say, “It’s the suffering body that brings us together.” In my case, that’s true. However, for many others it’s the suffering body that tears families apart.Three months ago, my mother was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. If you don’t know what that is, it is a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes abnormal myeloblasts. In normal terms, it means that she has cancer of the blood and it has spread all throughout her body. One day she was hiking up the side of a mo …

It’s called the Miracle of Life for a reason. The journey through pregnancy and child birth is astounding when you think of how scientific the body actually works. Cells multiply and divide at tremendous rates and the female body adapts and creates the perfect host for its parasitic growth. When the time for birth comes, the body automatically reacts. It instinctively knows that the baby needs to be evicted. The perfect birth is textbook, wonderful and ends with the birth of a newborn baby.To pl …

Sadness is a hallmark symptom of grief, which in turn is the consequence of losing something we care about. In this way you could say that sadness and love are inextricably linked.Yes, when you are grieving, it is normal to feel sad. I would even argue that it is necessary to feel sad. But why is it necessary? Why does the emotion we call sadness have to exist at all? Couldn’t we just move from loss to shock to acceptance without all that pain in the middle?The answer is that sadness plays an es …

Today I saw a ravenAs it quietly flew by.It landed in a treeThat stood nearby.I watched it for a momentWondering if it’s here for me.To take me awayTo set my spirit free.Or maybe it was youSent from aboveChecking in on meSending all your love.Then without a whisperThat black bird flew awayAnd I started to cryKnowing I must stay.I’ve been looking for youIn everything I seeEverywhere I goAnywhere you may be.I want to hear so badlyYour voice that sounds so sweetTo hear the words “I love you”My hear …

People often ask me how I survived the death of two children four days apart and prepared two separate funerals in one week. My 19 year old daughter Peggy was killed instantly in a freak car accident and my 21 year old son Denis died four days later from his injuries, the day after we had just buried Peggy. When the last funeral guest went home the evening of the second funeral, leaving my husband and me all alone after being pampered and waited on for a whole week, I can remember thinking, “How …